Egg thieves caught, new problems

Well we may have made a dent in the egg thief problem.  However I had a new problem and a new mystery with the chickens this week. 

We sat the live trap this week.  I placed it just inside the coop door in front of the hole under the door where we knew the critter was going into the coop.  I baited it with some small silky eggs.  The cats were very curious as to what I was doing and before I left the barn that evening I caught a cat.  Luckily I gave the trap one last inspection and released the cat.  Next morning however there was an angry, small male opossum inside.  He had quite a pretty coat, no doubt because of all the cat food and eggs he had been devouring. Steve dispatched him with the 22. 

I thought maybe that was it, but there were still only a few eggs the next morning and evidence that something had went under the door.  So the trap was set again and this time I caught a very large and very heavy female possum.  Steve shot it too.   She also had a nice coat.  She was very aggressive - no playing dead with either of these possums.  You could see by their large jaws that they could very easily crunch an egg.  Unfortunately the egg count has not gone up so the trap will need to be set again.

Another problem surfaced however.  Thursday afternoon I heard our dogs barking hysterically.  Earlier in the day I had looked out the window and saw they had treed something in the big pine in the back yard probably a squirrel and were doing that type of bark.  In fact they had been outside barking all day, it was mild and sunny.  So I ignored the last barking session and continued working in the office.  Steve was napping as he usually does in late afternoon.

An hour or so later I went outside to feed and found out the reason for the barking. When I got to the barn I found my pen of tiny bantams had been broken into and all of the birds were dead or missing.  A layer that had been loose was half under the coop door, where the possums were scooting through, and she had been roughed up.   It immediately looked like the work of our dogs- who have escaped and done this before.  On the way back to the house to count dog noses I noticed another dead large hen, who had been loose.

A quick check revealed all the dogs were inside with Steve.  Now when our dogs escape their yard they normally do not return to it on their own.  It takes some chasing and angry words to get them back in place.  Yet there they all were.  Ginger, the prime suspect, was a bit muddy and seemed to be limping but I could not imagine her quitting her fun and returning to the house voluntarily.  And I had seen her jumping around in the back yard earlier, which could account for the limp as she isn’t a young dog.

Back at the barn there were two hens and the frizzle rooster pecking around in the front part of the barn as if nothing had happened.  All the cats were sitting around waiting to be fed.  I found the little porcelain rooster half behind a feed sack.  He had been mauled and didn’t look good and died the next day.  I couldn’t find two of the small porcelain hens and searched the barn hoping they were hiding.  The laying hen that was half under the door I put in a nest box.  She has survived so far.  Nothing seemed amiss inside the chicken coop or in the back of the barn where the turkeys and ducks were.  The silky/frizzle pen was also untouched. 

It was getting dark and I had to give up the search outside for carcasses or hurt birds.  I had also done a quick inspection around the perimeter of our dog yard, just in case, but didn’t see any obvious escape route.  The next morning I buried the dead birds and searched again for the missing birds with no luck.  The frizzle rooster was out and about but I caught the loose hens and put them in the coop where I felt they would be safer.   We guessed that someone’s stray dog had come along and killed the birds. 

We went to the grocery and came home.  All the dogs were inside when we came in. (They have a doggie door.)   After unloading groceries I went back out to the car to go to the bank.  I was sitting in the car getting things together when I looked up and saw Ginger and Buddy trotting down the driveway to the barn.  They were a little surprised when I popped out of the car and stopped them. 

My instinct that the killing had been Gingers work was right, even though she had worked hard to put on the innocent act.  Ginger is a Yorkie- Jack Russell cross, a cute 12 year old, little brown teddy bear of a dog who weighs about 10 pounds and is friendly and sweet to people. But she loves to chase and kill prey which comes from her terrier roots.  I think Buddy, a Jack Russell, was out for the first time and it was he who led me to where the two of them had escaped.  When he saw I was mad he headed right back to the secret spot.

Now the fence around our dog yard- essentially our back yard- is 6 feet or more tall.  The terriers used to climb it like cats so we installed a hot wire at the top.  Then they were digging out so we installed another hot wire at the bottom.  For several years they had been well confined- unless they ran out a door between our legs. The bottom 4 feet of the fence is chain link, but we installed it with wood posts and cross beams to make it look a little better.  At the corner of the house on the west side the fence had pulled away from the post right at a spot where the hot wire didn’t quite reach.

What amazed me was that Ginger had gotten out then came back through the hole and came inside acting perfectly innocent.  This trick though allowed to her to go out again though and have some fun.  The frizzle rooster turned up missing that evening and I suspect she had been out while we were at the grocery store.  The last time I think she thought that I was gone and Steve had gone to the bedroom to nap and she was free to kill again.  This time Buddy must have followed her.  I don’t think he or any of the other dogs had been out before because the damage would have been greater- they incite each other.  And we probably would have seen one of them running around.

Needless to say the hole was fixed, the hot wire extended.  However I still have a mystery.  I didn’t find any bodies outside the morning after the first event even though I followed a trial of feathers down to the compost pile area.  On the next day I laid the body of the porcelain rooster on the compost pile, planning to bury it the next day.  However the body was gone, no feathers, no bones the next morning and I did not find the body of the frizzle rooster either.  Ginger never eats her prey- in fact as soon as they stop struggling the fun is over and she leaves them.  This leads me to believe that something else is skulking around at night, something big enough to carry away a small chicken whole.  So that’s the next mystery- and worry.